Parent and Child
by Tiggy the Hopeless Romantic
Summary: He could remember sitting on the floor, playing with a little wooden duck. She sat in a wicker chair... He remembered her long, swirling black skirts.


**Spoilers for Wicked and Son of A Witch**

**Dedicated to my own mother.**

He looked at the babe. Green as sin, green as her.

He susposed that was one question anwsered- Elphaba Thropp, The Wicked Witch of the West, had indeed mothered Liir. And, he susposed, his paternity could be attributed to Fiyero, Prince of the Arjiki.

The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place.

He looked at the little girl. No, there was no mistaking it- the baby was indeed the Witch's grandaughter. He could see Candle's Quadling face. The baby's eyes were a deeper blue than most- Liir's own blue. Fiyero's blue?

Liir panicked- he realized he was still holding the infant in the rain- but luckily, she didn't seem to have inherited Elphaba's water allergy. He pulled the baby in, wrapped her in a towel, and laid her in the little onion basket that served as a cradel. He would make a better one, soon.

He felt rather hopeless- Liir didn't know children. He couldn't really remember the mauntry, and had been the youngest at Kiamo Ko.

So, he tried to emulate his own parent-figure. His _mother_. His Elphaba. He susposed he really had never given her enough credit. She had kept him alive, and fed for fourteen years, and would've done more if not for her own watery end. But just the same, they had never behaved as a normal mother and son.

His first memory he susposed was appropriate enough, for it was indeed of Elphaba. He could remember sitting on the floor, playing with a little wooden duck. She sat in a wicker chair. He couldn't recall what she was doing, though he susposed it could have been some sort of needle work. He remembered her long, swirling black skirts. Few children assosiated black with safety, but Liir had. He could remember the little ducky, and then a pretty sound. Her singing. He couldn't remember the words, but he _could_ remember her voice. That was the only time he could recall her singing. He wished he could remember another occasion.

He could remember being older, at Kiamo Ko. He could remember being ill. It was after they were taken. He susposed he had been about eight, or maybe nine. It was a particularly nasty virus he had. His insides had been turned to mush. It had been late, very late, but he ran a fever, and couldn't sleep. He could remember her sitting, perched in a chair beside his sick-bed, thumbing through some large book. The Grimmerie? Perhaps. Nothing was exceptional about the memory, but he smiled to think of her, what the Ozians would think of seeing her in such a normal role. A mother watching over her ill son. Hardly a wicked image, befitting the infamous witch.

Of course, he had incurred her wrath. He recalled being twelve, tending to the Monkeys. A baby had been born, and ran off. It had been his fault- he hadn't checked the barn the Animals had(well, still did, he susposed) lived in. She'd initially screamed at him, and then hadn't spoken to him for a week. It had been one of the worse weeks of Liir's life, and that was really saying something.

But still, he could also remember, a day toward the end. The Witch's birthday, in early winter, late fall. He hadn't known her birthday until Nanny had announced it, the week before, commenting that Elphaba would look closer to her relatively young age, if she let down her hair, and brushed it out. Elphaba, well no, she was the Witch by that point, had commented that being a week shy of thirty-eight hardly made her the college-girl she had been, twenty years before. So Liir had decided to do one of the oddest things of his life. He had found a little garden, one of the sisters, Four? had set up. He had found a bush of pink roses. He hardly though the Witch would appreciate pink, but he had left it in her room, with a note saying: Happy Birthday, from Liir. She never mentioned it, but noticed she had been particularly kind for the following few days.

In the present. Liir sighed. Little Baby was watching him, with big blue eyes that already seemed to be tracking his movements. "Alright, Fabala, let's see what breakfast we can find, honey."


End file.
